


The Magic Goes Away

by Ayulsa (execharmonious)



Category: Loveless
Genre: Angst, Gen, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-18
Updated: 2010-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:54:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/execharmonious/pseuds/Ayulsa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soubi tells Kio a fairytale. Sort of. Companion fic to Where I Can't Follow; this is the second fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Magic Goes Away

Kio looked up from his midnight snack as the door swung open, blowing freezing air all through the apartment.

"Sou-chan?" he asked before knowing, a _Sou-chan-are-you-all-right_ rather than a _Sou-chan-is-that-you._ It couldn't be anyone else, at this time of night.

He heard the _shfffffff-jingle-clunk_ sound of someone's back sliding down the wall followed by their coat pockets hitting the floor, and rounded the corner to see Soubi sitting where his slippers had been, head on his knees.

"Sou-chan?" He knelt down, trying to get a better look at him, checking for blood. "What's up?"

No evident injuries, but no response, either. Kio sighed, and propped his back against the wall next to Soubi, waiting. Clouds of ice crystals clung to his hair, little remnants of winter.

"Hey, at least take your jacket off, will ya? It's got to be damp. That'll do you no good."

Without ceremony, Soubi shrugged the coat off his shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Kio winced; he hadn't meant to _order_ Soubi, and the swiftness of his obedience was chilling.

"Do you want dinner?" It was a stupid question, but he felt like he had to say something. Anything, to keep the moments from draining away into bloodless silence, their thoughts rotting in their heads.

Sudden, but with some effort, Soubi picked himself up off the floor, revealing Kio's crushed slippers. "I think I need to lie down."

"Mm. 'Kay." Kio got up too, thankful for the broken spell. He wandered over to the bed, let his eyes close as he flopped down, let the creak of the bedsprings and the smell of wet streets and tobacco in his hair tell of Soubi's presence. It was nice to exercise your senses, sometimes. He rolled over, to where the bed dipped at his side and the smell of ash was strongest.

After a long pause, Soubi spoke. "I want to tell you a story. If that's okay."

_That slave mindset again._ "Of course it's okay, Sou-chan. Tell me anything you want."

"It's not like you don't know it. But I wanted to say it. Just in case it's the last time."

"Tell me anything," Kio repeated in a whisper. He opened his eyes to look at Soubi, only to see the other's eyes flutter closed, like butterflies folding their wings. To sleep, perchance to dream of being men. Didn't butterflies only live for a day? Kio wondered if when they slept, they slept their last.

_No._ He wouldn't acknowledge Soubi's last statement, wouldn't let that play on his mind.

He listened.

"When I was very young," Soubi began, "I lost my parents. Ritsu-sensei took me in. He taught me how to be a fighter for a sacrifice, how to care about nothing else. He took everything else away" --_my ears,_ he didn't say, but it was there, in the way his eyes twitched beneath their lids like they were searching up to the top of his head-- "and what was left was a me that knew only this. That was honed to be only this. He made me obedient to him, in deed, in thought, to his every word. And then he gave me away."

Kio hung on Soubi's words as he spoke, half because this was Soubi's heart that was pouring out and he could not treat that lightly, and half because of the way-- it seemed awful to admit it, but it was true-- that Soubi's voice, low, majestic and eerily calm, made even these cruel things sound something like a fairytale.

Soubi _was_ a fairytale, he thought, in an odd sort of observation. A twisted kind, but true, his life more vivid and more brutish than Kio's would ever be.

"He gave me to Seimei. And Seimei-- I didn't want him, at first." He said it in a hushed voice, gravelly, haunted, as if the man might know of his verbal transgression. "I wanted Ritsu-sensei. But Seimei... he wiped that all away, made me his. Made me know nothing more." Kio found himself wondering how much of that was true, and how much was Soubi convincing himself that he never mourned that first bond's breaking. "I would have done anything for him. Died at his command. But then...." Soubi took a deep breath, like the words themselves wearied him. "He gave me to Ritsuka. Ritsuka... Ritsuka was...."

"Go on," said Kio, encouraging him through the pain. Not knowing what else to do, or say.

"He wasn't like the others. He never wanted to punish me, or-- or to control me, but...." He says the _but_ like it was ever a good thing, that the others did. "But there was a life in him I've never known in anyone else, a simple sort of life, pure, untouched. I felt like all I needed from him was the chance to help him thrive. To keep the world from closing in on him. To keep him free."

Kio propped himself up on his arms, hovering over Soubi, broken from his trance by sudden alarm. "What's happened, Sou-chan?" _Ritsuka can't be dead, right? Not his mother.... Or Septimal Moon. Seimei. Dammit. There're too many things out there after that boy, and what did he ever do...._

"I wanted him to be free. Not pinned, like...." _Like a butterfly, like Soubi, tied to Soubi's life and Soubi's scars._ They were both thinking the same thing.

"But Sou-chan, what...."

"His fighter unit," said Soubi, and Kio thought, _oh,_ in both relief and pain. His voice was thick, and the words came out too measured. _Why be so stubborn?_ Kio wondered sadly. _If you're going to make it so obvious, you might as well cry._ But he didn't. He hadn't, even when he'd lost Seimei, though he'd done just about everything else. "The Loveless fighter, and... so, now... I suppose, that's it. The end of the line. The Aoyagis don't need me any more, and... there's nowhere left to go."

Kio's brain was turning over some metaphor he'd heard in sex ed, about how sex was kind of like duct tape and every time you stuck to someone, a bit of you came off with them when you pulled away. He'd always thought it was stupid, but he wondered if Soubi felt like that. Giving bits of himself to people, until there was no more left.

He lay down next to Soubi, and tugged him close, closing his eyes so the world would go away when he said it. "You can stay here, with me," he said. _I love you_, he didn't say. _I love you more than any of them ever did._

He waited for Soubi to say _it's not enough, it will never be enough,_ because he knew that it wasn't, knew that Soubi with his lost cold eyes would always be searching for that something more. He was a fool to think that he, not a fighter or a sacrifice but just a man, could replace those perfect tethers with his simple heart and his small hands.

But instead he felt Soubi's nose brush against his collarbone, the other man closing a little more of the distance, his sigh warm against Kio's skin. "I'll try," he said, eventually, and Kio knew what he meant by it. _Even without my whole world, I'll try to live._

"That's all I need to hear," he murmured into Soubi's hair. All he wanted, for tonight, was to know Soubi would be there in the morning; there, and not in some gutter somewhere, his skin frosted over with the chill of the night.

It was not enough. Maybe it would never be enough. But as he felt Soubi slacken into weakness, collapsed beneath the weight of giving up, he prayed it would hold him for now.

_You're like a fairytale, Sou-chan,_ he thought he might have said. _But it's so sad._ And he might have heard Soubi say, _it was only sad at the end._ And despite all of the horror, the twisted marks on Soubi's skin, he knew it to be true, somewhere deep inside that mattered.

_And they left the kingdom of magic, and returned home, to their normal lives; and it was better that way, anyhow._ Wasn't that how those stories ended? He'd always thought "it's over" had sounded like a relief, a release from all that fighting and death. But now the portal had been closed, and a prince of that world entrusted to his arms, and _it's over, it's over_ only sounded like the cry of someone bereaved.

He clung to Soubi tightly, warding him against the dark.


End file.
